Wool Being Pulled over the Eyes of the American Public?

"They are lying to us!" claims a "fan".

Reconciling first time unemployment claims data with new jobs data: 

"In the last 54 weeks we had 16,217,000 new sign up (first time claims) for unemployment . Creating 100,000 new jobs a week is a far (sic) figure thats needed , not a good sign , the wool has been pulled over the American public's eyes."

                                                                                          signed Anonymous 

Baaaa....

Sheep with wool pulled over his eyes found at SEIU's blog.

In other words, this person believes that we need at least 400,000 jobs a month to account for all of the people getting laid off and losing their jobs.
 

Is the administration pulling the wool over people's eyes AGAIN?

Is he right?  Is there really any wool-pulling going on? Or is this person just another "Unemployment Truther" (Thanks, Steve Benen of the Rachel Maddow blog over at MSNBC for that term.) with his pants in a bunch?

Other people out there may have the same question, so I decided to post his question and my answer here, in a separate blog article.

The issue is NET vs. GROSS numbers of jobs. 

Basically, Anonymous is confusing NET and GROSS numbers of jobs. The 200,000 new jobs each month is a NET number, meaning that we have 200,000+ MORE jobs than we did the last month. But it doesn't mean that ONLY 200,000 people have been hired in that month.

Let me see if I can explain:

What is the JOLTS report? 

The JOLTS (Job Openings, Layoffs, and Turnover Survey) report tells us the whole story of how many people have been hired for new jobs, how many people have been terminated, how many quit, etc. The JOLTS data is about 6 weeks behind the monthly jobs data, so the latest data that we have now is for July. (Note: August data was just released this morning, October 7th, 2014. I have not yet updated these numbers.) 

In July 1,632,000 people were laid off or fired. Altogether in July, there were 4,998,000 "separations" meaning people who left their jobs for any reason, most of whom quit their jobs. But 5,319,000 people were hired in July! Over time these numbers do balance out to the monthly jobs numbers.. but you can see that there were about 300,000 MORE people starting jobs than leaving jobs in July. 

Also, in July 1,200,000 people filed for first time unemployment, and, yes, about 16 million people have filed for first time unemployment claims over the past year. The 1,200,000 first time claims filings in July jive completely with the 1,600,000 people who were laid off or fired in July, as not all who are laid off or fired are eligible for unemployment benefits.

No Wool Here

OK, I hope this clarifies things.  No wool has been pulled over the American public's eyes, Anonymous.. Just a lot of data that a math-challenged, easily-brainwashed public doesn't understand.

Baaaaaa....